Interview: Honeywell on Sustainable Aviation Fuel Technologies and the Future of Low-Carbon Energy

ChemAnalyst Talks with Barry Glickman, Vice President, Low Carbon Energy at Honeywell

Honeywell, an integrated operating company serving a broad range of industries and geographies worldwide, delivers advanced technologies and solutions across aerospace, industrial automation, building automation, and process technology. Backed by its Honeywell Accelerator operating system and Honeywell Forge platform, the company focuses on driving innovation that enhances sustainability, safety, and operational efficiency while helping organizations tackle complex global challenges. ChemAnalyst spoke with Barry Glickman, Vice President, Low Carbon Energy at Honeywell, to discuss the company’s strategy and advancements in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and low-carbon energy technologies. Drawing on his expertise, Glickman highlighted Honeywell’s decade-long leadership in renewable fuels, the development of scalable solutions such as eFining™, and the importance of addressing key industry challenges like feedstock availability and cost competitiveness. He also emphasized the role of strategic collaborations, policy frameworks, and carbon capture technologies in accelerating SAF adoption globally. Looking ahead, Honeywell aims to expand its portfolio of innovative fuel technologies, leverage diverse feedstock pathways, and enhance process efficiency to support the transition toward a more sustainable aviation sector. By combining technological innovation with strategic partnerships and digital capabilities, the company continues to strengthen its position as a key enabler in the evolving low-carbon fuels ecosystem.

Complete Interview with Mr. Barry Glickman,

Questions for Barry Glickman, Vice President, Low Carbon Energy, part of Honeywell’s Process Technology Business

Q: As Vice President of Low Carbon Energy, part of Honeywell’s Process Technology business, you have been closely involved in advancing the company’s portfolio of sustainable fuel technologies. Could you provide an overview of Honeywell’s journey in the sustainable aviation fuel segment and explain how the company has leveraged its technological expertise to develop scalable solutions such as eFining™ for global markets?

Mr. Barry Glickman: Honeywell has been active in renewable fuels for more than a decade and helped pioneer commercial SAF production in 2016 with its Ecofining™ process technology. Since then, we’ve expanded our portfolio to address both near-term and long-term aviation emission reduction initiatives. Our technologies are designed to help address two of the biggest challenges in the renewable fuels market, cost and feedstock availability. By improving efficiency, offering modular deployment and expanding the range of feedstock that can be used to produce SAF, our process technologies can deliver scalable solutions for global markets.

Honeywell eFining™ process technology is one example of our SAF process technology pathways. It enables electro-sustainable aviation fuel (eSAF) to be produced using methanol from captured CO2 and renewable hydrogen as feedstock. Enabling the production of eSAF from abundant feedstock options such as CO2 will be especially important in regions with eSAF mandates, such as the European Union's ReFuel EU initiative that requires aviation fuel supply to be at least 35% eSAF by 2050.

Q: Honeywell recently announced a collaboration with Verso Energy to deploy its eFining™ methanol-to-jet technology for electro-sustainable aviation fuel production. Could you elaborate on the strategic significance of this agreement and how it supports Honeywell’s broader low-carbon energy ambitions?

Mr. Barry Glickman: The agreement with Verso Energy is a good example of eFuel pathways moving from concept to deployment. Verso Energy’s strong project development capabilities combined with Honeywell’s proven, advanced technologies and standardized design models will help reduce capital expenses, accelerate speed to market and increase global eSAF capacity. Our eFining process technology allows customers to use abundant carbon dioxide as feedstock, making eSAF production scalable and less carbon intensive through processing.

By using Honeywell’s eFining technology across seven planned production facilities in Europe and the United States, Verso Energy will have the ability to produce approximately 200 million gallons of eSAF per year, helping to support the world’s growing energy needs.

Q: Honeywell’s eFining™ methanol-to-jet technology converts renewable methanol into aviation fuel. Could you explain how this technology works and what advantages it offers compared with other sustainable aviation fuel production pathways?

Mr. Barry Glickman: Honeywell’s eFining process provides another viable pathway to SAF production—particularly in regions where access to biomass is limited but renewable power and CO2 are available. By not relying on a single process technology or source, producers can better address supply constraints, adapt to regional differences and ensure consistent scalable SAF production.

The process transforms renewable methanol—produced from captured CO2 and green hydrogen—into drop-in aviation fuel that meets existing jet fuel specifications. Because methanol is already widely produced and transported, this pathway offers flexibility, scalability, and compatibility with current infrastructure. Additionally, by utilizing carbon dioxide as feedstock, the process can significantly reduce carbon intensity.

Captured CO2 is combined with green hydrogen, created using renewable electricity, to produce eMethanol. This eMethanol is then processed through Honeywell UOP eFining process technology to yield eSAF, which can be blended with conventional jet fuel and used in today’s aircraft and fueling infrastructure without modification. This approach enables scalable fuel production using abundant, non-biogenic feedstocks, while significantly reducing lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions.

Q: Scalability remains a key challenge in the sustainable aviation fuel industry. How does Honeywell’s eFining technology help address barriers related to feedstock availability, production scale, and overall project economics?

Mr. Barry Glickman: Scalability has been at the core of Honeywell’s SAF innovation journey for more than a decade, as we’ve deliberately developed and refined our technologies to overcome the two fundamental barriers to scale—cost and feedstock diversity—while recognizing that achieving cost to produce parity with conventional jet fuel is essential for broadscale adoption across the aviation industry.

Our eFining process technology directly addresses these challenges by fundamentally changing how SAF can be produced. Rather than relying solely on constrained feedstocks, eFining helps decouple SAF production from limited biomass availability by leveraging renewable electricity, green hydrogen and captured carbon.

This approach expands the pool of viable, more abundant feedstock options, enabling SAF production to scale without being constrained by traditional supply bottlenecks. At the same time, Honeywell focuses on improving project economics by optimizing and modernizing existing refining and processing infrastructure, which lowers both capital and operating costs and improves bankability for producers.

Honeywell has been developing and refining its SAF technologies for more than a decade, continually advancing process efficiency, catalyst performance and modular system design. These improvements have helped cut SAF production costs by 25%. As an example, advances in Honeywell’s Ecofining process technology reduced the cost per gallon from $6.06 to $4.56. Driving down production costs remains central to Honeywell’s strategy, as reaching cost to produce parity with fossil-based jet fuel is a milestone for encouraging widespread SAF deployment.

Q: Initiatives such as the European Union’s ReFuelEU Aviation Initiative are expected to significantly boost SAF demand in the coming years. In your view, how are policy frameworks and regulatory mandates shaping the pace of SAF adoption worldwide?

Mr. Barry Glickman: Programs like the ReFuelEU Aviation Initiative play a pivotal role in accelerating SAF adoption by creating the policy certainty the industry needs to invest and scale with confidence.

At a global level, policy frameworks and regulatory mandates are increasingly shaping the pace of SAF adoption by sending a clear, long-term demand signal to fuel producers, airlines and investors. These types of mandates help reduce market uncertainty by establishing clear blending targets and timelines, which in turn unlock capital, accelerate project development and support final investment decisions.

Beyond demand creation, policy frameworks are also shaping how SAF adoption progresses by driving greater standardization, transparency and accountability around reporting. As policymakers work to define consistent emissions criteria and measurement expectations, the industry is responding with advanced technology, automation and digitalization solutions that enable more accurate and defensible emissions tracking.

From Honeywell’s perspective, this evolution is important: regulators, investors and customers increasingly expect not just estimated emissions reductions, but traceable, data driven explanations of where issues occur and how they are reduced. Connected and digital solutions that integrate operational data, simulations, site level measurements, and external monitoring tools are becoming key enablers of compliance and credibility in a more regulated SAF market.

Taken together, these policy and regulatory developments are accelerating SAF adoption worldwide by simultaneously stimulating demand and raising the bar for transparency and performance. Mandates such as ReFuelEU Aviation help create the economic conditions necessary for scale, while evolving reporting and verification requirements encourage the deployment of advanced technologies that improve confidence in SAF’s benefits.

Q: Carbon dioxide utilization is a central element of the eFining pathway. How significant do you believe carbon capture and utilization technologies will be in enabling the next generation of low-carbon fuels?

Mr. Barry Glickman: Carbon utilization will be important to enable the next generation of low carbon fuels, and it is foundational to pathways like eFining that are designed to scale over the long term. At a broader level, carbon capture technologies are becoming an essential tool as global energy demand continues to rise and hard-to-abate industries work to reduce emissions. Honeywell continues to see strong customer interest and growing carbon capture, utilization and storage deployments as organizations pursue specific business, regulatory and carbon reduction goals.

What is driving that momentum is the maturity of the technology: today’s carbon capture solutions are efficient, cost-effective and scalable, making them viable for real-world industrial deployment rather than just pilot projects. For example, Honeywell’s Advanced Solvent Carbon Capture technology designed for post-combustion flue gas applications enables greater than 95% CO2 capture.

From a fuels perspective, carbon capture can unlock new opportunities. Carbon capture and utilization is foundational to eFuels because it enables captured CO2 to be recycled into valuable products rather than released into the atmosphere. This ability to transform waste carbon into a feedstock fundamentally changes the scalability equation for low carbon fuels and is why carbon utilization is such a powerful enabler of next generation SAF and eFuels.

Q: Honeywell has developed a diverse portfolio of renewable fuel technologies, including Ecofining, FT Unicracking, and Ethanol to Jet. How do these technologies collectively strengthen Honeywell’s position in the rapidly evolving low-carbon fuels ecosystem?

Mr. Barry Glickman: Honeywell’s portfolio of renewable fuel process technologies is a strategic advantage in a low carbon fuels market that is evolving rapidly and facing increasing pressure to deliver both scale and flexibility as global energy demand grows. With worldwide energy demand expected to rise by roughly 32% by 2050—and electricity demand alone projected to increase by about 75% over the same period —the energy sector must balance reduced emission initiatives with affordability, security and reliability. Honeywell’s technology portfolio is designed to help customers navigate that complexity by offering multiple, proven pathways to lower carbon fuels rather than a one-size-fits-all solution.

A core strength of Honeywell’s approach is that many of its biofuel technologies enable refineries to produce alternative fuels using existing infrastructure. This lowers capital costs, reduces risk, and accelerates time to market—critical factors in a sector dealing with volatile energy prices and rising expectations for responsible operations. At the same time, Honeywell continues to invest in expanding SAF and renewable fuel production from a broader range of feedstocks, helping customers scale production while mitigating feedstock constraints.

Each technology in Honeywell’s portfolio plays a distinct and complementary role. As mentioned earlier, Honeywell pioneered commercial SAF production in 2016 with its Ecofining process technology that converts waste fats, oils, greases, and certain oil crops into renewable diesel and SAF. We’ve talked about our eFining extending that leadership into next generation fuels by enabling eFuels production using captured CO2 and hydrogen. Our FT Unicracking process technology further strengthens the portfolio by expanding feedstock flexibility and improving economics for synthetic fuel production, and complements Honeywell’s other pathways by enabling SAF production from syngas-based routes, including biomass and waste derived inputs, which is increasingly important as demand accelerates.

Additional technologies, such as Ethanol-to-Jet and Honeywell’s Biocrude Upgrading process, further broaden the portfolio. Biocrude Upgrading enables biocrude produced at decentralized sites to be refined at major facilities into drop-in renewable marine fuels, gasoline, and SAF. These fuels provide cost-effective, lower carbon alternatives that work with existing engines and infrastructure, supporting carbon reduction beyond aviation and into hard-to-abate sectors like maritime transport.

Collectively, this portfolio—including Ecofining, FT Unicracking, Ethanol-to-Jet, eFining, and Biocrude Upgrading—allows customers to select the technology that best fits their specific feedstocks, infrastructure, regional policies, and carbon reduction goals. That flexibility is a key differentiator in a rapidly evolving low carbon fuels ecosystem. By offering multiple, proven pathways rather than a single solution, Honeywell is positioned as a trusted technology provider that can help producers scale today while adapting to tomorrow’s regulatory, economic and feedstock realities.

Q: Finally, what message would you like to share with aviation stakeholders, policymakers, and investors regarding the role of technology innovation in building a scalable and economically viable sustainable aviation fuel industry?

Mr. Barry Glickman: Technology innovation is central to making SAF scalable and economically viable. With the right alignment of policy, capital and proven technologies, SAF can become a cornerstone of aviation’s path to a lower-carbon future.